As all working mothers know, the moment you are all dressed up beautifully and ready to cross the threshold to go to work, the baby will spit up massively on your carefully selected outfit.

My outfit today is a black dress with a subdued flowery pattern and lace, so the spit up I wear on my chest as a medal is very visible. 

Today I have the first real day of being back to campus. Meetings and appointments await me. For now, I have 5 of them scheduled for today. And here is a small reminder of why education is needed:

Even as a joke it’s not funny.

An instructor of modern and classical languages at Missouri State University stabbed an killed a professor emeritus and also stabbed his wife when she tried to defend her husband. 

The killer arrived at the victims’ residence in a Mercedes Benz and barged into the professor’s house, brandishing a big knife. He is being charged with 2nd degree murder. 

I’m fed up with ridiculous suggestions that Obama should travel to Louisiana. Yes, a presidential visit is exactly what’s needed in the midst of a relief operation. Everybody should drop everything and concentrate on putting in place security measures and accommodating the presidential personnel. That’s so much more important than sheltering the homeless and tending to the sick. 

Trump statues. Hilarious!

UN peacekeepers in South Sudan ignored the rape and assault of aid workers. 
Will local authorities subsidize Uber instead of creating public transit systems?

A transcription of one of Trump’s sentences. Garcia Marquez’s dictator characters would be jealous!

A Soviet commercial for corn. Bonus points for those who know why there was this sudden obsession with corn in the USSR.

A weird name for a radio station. 

Italy aims to outlaw raising kids as vegans. Finally!

Everything is fucked: the syllabus. Hilarious!

I was very excited to start introducing Klara to solid foods. I put her in her ergonomic high chair, put a Zara Baby bib on her, and filled an organic bamboo bowl with organic quinoa puree. (I’m 40 and I don’t have any other children, ok? If I want to go nuts with organic bowls and stuff, I will.)

Feeling great about myself, I lifted an organic bamboo baby spoon to Klara’s lips and… realized that she had no idea what I wanted from her. She looked at me with scepticism as I waved the spoon around and commanded her to open her mouth. The whole procedure ended with me collapsed on the floor with laughter and Klara laughing at me from the ergonomic high chair. 

Since then, whenever I put her in that chair and take out the bowl, it’s like a command to both of us to start howling with laughter. It’s really cool because it’s like a private joke we share. I’m sure she’ll learn to eat solids sooner or later but in the meanwhile we can have fun about it. 

The pediatrician insists we don’t use a baby walker and describes scenes of horrible misfortunes that await us if we do. 

It’s a great thing, then, that I have no idea what a baby walker even is. Actually, I thought this entire time that I was a baby walker because I take our baby out for walks. But no, apparently it’s something that allows a baby to move at the speed of 3 feet a second and reach poisonous substances and sharp objects.

Finally, the NY TIMES has found the courage to report that Russians are using incendiary bombs on civilians in Syria. This has been known for a long time: it’s not like you can conceal incendiary bombs. There’s ample footage of their use on Syrians. 

But the ridiculous hope that Russians will help defeat ISIS required maintaining the pretense that nobody could see the terrifying glow of these bombs dropped on densely populated neighborhoods.

Classes begin on Monday but we still haven’t found enough people to cover our Beginner Spanish sections. Since there are no Spanish-speakers in the area, there isn’t much difference between finding a Beginner Spanish and Beginner Ukrainian teacher. (We aren’t looking for a teacher of Ukrainian but if we were, I can’t imagine the process being any less painful.)

When I traveled up North this month, I was overwhelmed by the presence of Hispanic people everywhere. I got to speak more Spanish in those few days in Montreal that I did in the entire year here. (Because I wasn’t on campus, of course.) And I’m just not as happy without Spanish-speakers around.

The nation-state mentality is not quitting without a fight. Right now on TV there started a discussion about bullying and cruelty on social media. Within seconds, though, the conversation was dead because the participants became obsessed with affirming that Americans are crueler on social media than anybody else. 

Twitter, Instagram, and Co obviously know no national borders. It’s impossible to categorize participants according to nationality. I mean, who do I count for? American, Ukrainian, Canadian? What about reader Cliff Arroyo? Or reader Stringer Bell? 

As a result of the obsession with proving that Americans are the most whatever, the discussion of online cruelty failed.